Dreaming about internationalizing the curriculum Who What And

Dreaming about internationalizing the curriculum: Who? What? And How? Fred Dervin Department of Teacher Education, HIS, University of Helsinki, Finland http: //blogs. helsinki. fi/dervin/

• “We cannot repeat too often that it is not by preaching love of our neighbor that we can achieve it…” (Bergson, 1932) • “The gulf between the real diversity of the world and the artificial and often imaginary diversity of our social experiments is very large” (Wood, 2003)

Internationalization + curriculum • Who? • What? • How? • Renewed notion of the ‘intercultural’

My understanding of curriculum • The total learning experience provided by an institution – content of courses, – methods employed, – norms and values • Attempt at covering all these aspects? • Emphasis on norms and values

Who? • ‘Us’ • ‘Them’ • Us-Them within and outside institutions • Society at large • Transdisciplinarity (civic + corporate)

• Internationalization at home must not be a new way of segregating, reproducing and privileging • Not creating the ‘international’ for us! • All • Reciprocal • What we teach-learn and how we behave towards self-other • INTER-!

Towards the ‘anthrophagic’ university? • Anthropoemic strategies (bulimic) “vomit out the deviant, keeping them outside of society or enclosing them in special institutions within their perimeters” • Anthropophagic strategies (cannibalistic): “deal with strangers and deviants by swallowing them up, by making them (their) own and by gaining strength from them” • Claude Levi-Strauss (1955)

What? Values and norms • Internationalization is not just about figures and numbers! (number of foreign students, number of courses in English, rankings, etc. ) • for the ‘locals’ (staff, admin, students) – Honest and realistic end of ‘disguised’ methodological nationalism? – Welcoming ‘others’, allowing others to enter (f 2 f or online or both) – ‘not commodities’ – Treating them fairly; giving them an extra boost (Positive discrimination? ? ) – Considering them as resources • For the ‘guests’ – Idem + Motivating them to learn how to navigate certain contexts/LANGUAGE!

How? • Question misnomers: – Interculturality, integrate, diversity, ‘home’, etc. • Deconstruct and reconstruct objectives: – Do not promise too much! (‘know thyself’, ‘respect all cultures’, ‘achieve tolerance’…) • Avoid (new) hierarchies: East/west/North/South-insiders/outsidersglobal/local… – Boaventura de Souza Santo’ s metaphor of abyssal lines (2007) • Avoid creating heterotopias

• Professional development for all • Systematic inclusion of discussions around the notion of internationalization and e. g. the intercultural in terms of values and norms • Reflexivity, coherence and progression (course contents, methods) • Ensure quality

ONE KEY: THE INTERCULTURAL? “A NAME IS MERELY THE GUEST OF REALITY” (CHUANG-TZU 4 TH BCE)…

But reality is often the guest of a name… we imagine… • Inter – cultural? – Polysemic/empty – Ready-made assumptions – Lack of criticality (BBD) – Lack of interdisciplinarity

INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCES - A CENTRAL COMPONENT OF INTERNATIONALIZING THE CURRICULUM? COURSE CONTENT METHODOLOGIES VALUES AND NORMS?

A dream… in terms of what we learn, do and how we treat each other • • • Beyond BBD (Byram, Bennett, Deardorff) Beyond programmatic skills-recipes Beyond simple progression (stages) Beyond mere knowledge (“culture”) Beyond individuality (co-construction) Beyond assessment-’proof’ • Beyond hostipitality • Beyond culture and solid origins • Beyond solidification • A proposal

Beyond Hos(ti)pitality • Hospitality can easily turn into hostipitality – Hostility! (Derrida) – Power imbalance between the host and the guest – Politics of insider/outsider – Host = Hostage? – Inclusion in negotiating content, methods, values, norms, etc. ? Copyright Fred Dervin 2014

• “Handling issues with Finns, however is usually very easy; when a Finn promises to take care of something, consider it done. According to our values, people are expected to deliver what they have promised and this also applies to all the professors, teachers and other staff members”. (22) • “Whereas in many cultures people are supposed to follow instructions of teachers and supervisors, Finns are encouraged to solve problems independently and take initiative when needed. Thus while young people in many cultures live in a very protected and supervised life, students in Finland are very independent and take responsibility for their studies. This is another area where foreign students also get easily confused”. (234)

BEYOND CULTURE AND SOLID ORIGINS!

Beyond culture, beyond terra firma • “Culture is what one sees with, but seldom what one sees” (Holland & Quinn, 1987: 14) • Hoskins and Sallah (2011, p. 114): “simplistic focus on culture hides unequal power relations, including poverty, violence, structural inequalities such as racism and the possibilities of multiple identities”

• “the description of culture is ideological, and the (…) claim to scientific neutrality and objectivity comprise a naive denial of ideology”. (Holliday, 2011: 39)

Problems when comparing cultures • Explicit/implicit moralistic judgments • Better and worse, more civilized • Hierarchies – politics of the closed door (insiders/outsiders) • Patronizing • Unjustified ethnocentrism – “racism without races” (ex. of the Chinese) • Ways of establishing power relations • Justifying negative actions (attacks against freedom of speech, violation of human rights, misogyny, etc. )

Beyond solidification Origins = ? ? Who is in? Who is out? Who decides? Culture, race, language, ethnicity, gender, social class, psychological characteristics… • People are neither robots nor static entities • Let people choose and negotiate! • And… • •

• I filmed a session where my drama tutor colleagues were (as they saw it) facilitating a process through which children could embrace and feel good about their ethnic identity. Children were asked “we sometimes identify ourselves as white or black or Asian or mixed – how would you identify yourself? ” Our boy mumbles his answer. ‘Ah, dark skinned person!’, says the drama tutor. ‘No, a DANCING person!’ exclaims the boy.

• The lecturer asked him to demonstrate how Japanese people greet each other. Atsushi lifted his hand, wiggled his fingers, and said “hello”. Not satisfied, the lecturer insisted : “No, I mean how do you greet people in a formal situation ? ” Atsushi shrugged and repeated that this was how he greeted people. Getting annoyed, the lecturer-who was of course expecting Atsushi to perform a bow-said “Okay then, how would you greet the Emperor? ” Atsushi, feeling harassed, responded that he would prefer not to meet the emperor. Finally the lecturer was obliged to performed the bow herself, but Atsushi felt stereotyped and kept complaining about the incident for weeks.

Who is diverse? What is diversity? Who decides?

A PROPOSAL FOR BUILDING UP CURRICULA: UMBRELLA OBJECTIVES?

• Towards critical, reciprocal and negotiated (generous) hospitality

1. Diversity > Diverse diversities Cater for Simplexity… � “Each of us involves identities of various kinds in disparate contexts. The same person can be of Indian origin, a Parsee, a French citizen, a US resident, a woman, a poet, a vegetarian, an anthropologist, a university professor, a Christian, a bird watcher, and an avid believer in extra-terrestrial life and of the propensity of alien creatures to ride around the cosmos in multicoloured UFOs. Each of these collectivities, to all of which this person belongs, gives him or her a particular identity. They can all have relevance, depending on the context”. (Sen, 2005: 350)

2. Emphasize SIMILARITY too • Obsession with difference • Bias?

• “Upon meeting others and during interactions with them, first ask: what is it that I have in common with these other people? ” (Modagham, 2010) • More inter-! • Inter - cultural

3. Limit and make aware of power differentials – provide tools • Lakoff (1990: 17) “our every interaction is political, whether we intent it to be or not; everything we do in the course of a day communicates our relative power, our desire for a particular sort of connection, our identification of the other as one who needs something from us, or vice versa. Often, perhaps usually, we are unaware of these choices; we don’t realize that we are playing for high stakes even in the smallest of small talk”. • • Native vs. non-native Local vs. non local Social position, origins …

Conclusion: ‘Real’ internationalization at home?

• Holliday (2010: 27) • “the aim must be to put aside established descriptions, seek a broader picture and look for the hidden and the unexpressed”.

Towards… • Simplexity • Similarity • Consciousness of power/injustice • Success-failure • Right to emotions, to discuss ‘freely’ • Identity • Work on multifaceted representation • Understanding the process of otherisation of self-other

• “Education should consist in giving the power to become aware of, recognize, push through and present/defend one’s multiple identities, and to negotiate them in a ‘satisfactory’ manner with and for our interlocutors” (Dervin, 2013) • Internationalization = recognition, acceptance and re-de-negotiation of heterogeneity • “Who am we? ” • Contents, methods and values/norms • Key objective to real internationalization?

Fred Dervin Department of Teacher Education, HIS, University of Helsinki, Finland http: //blogs. helsinki. fi/dervin/ fred. dervin@helsinki. fi